


melt

by tsunderestorm



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Steve cannot love him the same, and so he loves him more.





	

It pains Steve to think about it in terms of the cold. Bucky was the Winter Soldier and still is, in many ways. He was so cold for so long; first fallen down an ice-capped mountain, thrown into a cryogenic cell, turned cold and calculating under Soviets and Nazis. Cold, so cold. Steve’s read the files; read the way that Bucky was first unmade, then made again. They'd believed themselves God, created him in their image of cruelty. Like clay, he'd say, if there were any artistry to it. Like putty, meant only to be manipulated.

He's read the files until they're dog-eared and soft under his fingertips, fold lines fraying like cheap fabric. About the way that they chilled his heart to nothingness in ways that made Steve’s blood run cold in his veins. He had lines of it memorized. Things like how The As - _Bucky,_ goddammit, he won't do what they did - shouldn't be allowed out on the fourth day of the seventh month, how the sound of fireworks makes it, _him_ , fight like a beast to get out, away, all the time saying one single name. Steve has seen his name all over those files, and it's for that reason he fights so hard.

Bucky is still in there, encased in the ice of his own self-doubt and hazy memories, he just needs warmth. Warmth and patience and resilience, and so it is those things he resolves to be. Gentle, tender when he can be, firm where he can't. Patient the way no one else wants to be. Resilient, strong. He will plant flowers in the graveyard of Bucky's heart and tend to them. He will be there for Bucky through thick and thin, warm summer and bitter, cruel winter. For every time he thought of him but didn’t _look._ For all of the years he wasn't there.

It pains him to think of Bucky in terms of the cold, but it’s the most accurate. Bucky returns to him in the same way that winter lets go of its hold on the land. His eyes are the color of a river still cold enough to shock but freed from the sheen of ice coating it. Clear and clean, the life frozen for so long stirring as the Earth wakes back up. As _Bucky_ wakes up, as he re-learn himself and Steve and the world. His skin regains some color, losing the deathly pallor of imprisonment each time they go for a walk. Warming the way that spring warms the land, silent and slow.

Steve will wait. He doesn’t mind a nice day in February, teasing an uncharacteristic warmth only to freeze back over one more time. He doesn’t mind a snowstorm in April, because sometimes these things happen. He’ll wait an eternity, years and years if it means the ice caps atop the mountainous walls of the fortress Bucky was forced to build inside of his mind turn to meltwater. Until HYDRA is a distant, unpleasant memory and Bucky doesn't shake when he sits in a chair that reclines, until he stops pushing his gun across the countertop if he feels that he's done something wrong.

Bucky melts into Steve’s arms, first because they’re familiar and then because they’re warm, so warm. Finally because they’re _his_. His Steve, heart, body and soul, when Steve's touches have convinced him that he loves him, still. Not the same, never the same. Steve cannot love him the same.

Because this Bucky is not the Bucky of 1934, his sixteenth year, huddled under bedsheets in the dead of December, fingers laced and mouths hot and wet against one another, skin hot and sticky, not the Bucky who'd laughed _well, I think that's how you're supposed to do it_. Not the Bucky of 1939, who'd pinned Steve to a wall and fucked him until they'd both cried from pain and pleasure and how something could feel so good but be so _bad_. Not the Bucky who, before the war, had been so bright and full of promise and life that Steve's heart had ached. _You are my sunshine_ , Bucky had been so fond of singing in his rich, sweet voice. But Bucky was more like the sun than Steve could ever be, friendly and funny through his sadness.

This Bucky is different. The Bucky of 2016, the Bucky of seventy one years of brainwashing, the Bucky who is fragile and scared and so strong, all at once. Steve cannot love him the same, and so he loves him _more._


End file.
